


Jealousy

by ohmyfae



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Hubert is jealous of a cat, M/M, Pining disguised as mild hatred, he wants forehead kisses that’s it that’s the plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:35:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25449961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyfae/pseuds/ohmyfae
Summary: Ferdinand gets a cat. Hubertdespisesit. Especially how Ferdinand keeps... kissing it’s little forehead and petting it gently and smiling at it like it’s something precious.i.e. Hubert gets jealous over a black kitten, more news at eleven.A fill for the kinkmeme!
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 29
Kudos: 248





	Jealousy

“Say hello to Harold von Aegir,” Ferdinand says. He’s tucked away in the back of the class with a soft knitted sweater pulled on over his black undershirt, looking far too pleased with himself. Hubert knows it’s entirely inappropriate, of course. Uniforms exist for a _reason._ Ferdinand has no business showing up in cabled sweaters in warm, comfortable shades of red, and he certainly has no business hiding cats in them.

The cat in question is a sleek black creature with wide yellow eyes and a whimpering, beeping cry, and Ferdinand’s gaze goes soft as he scratches it behind the ears. It purrs like a motor and blinks at him, and Ferdinand actually gasps.

“That means he likes me,” he says to Petra, who is leaning over the desk to stare.

Hubert has the sudden urge to pick up Ferdinand by the collar and shove him into the horse trough outside.

He doesn’t. Barely.

There’s no reason he should. It’s just a cat. Ferdinand will tire of it, soon enough, and go back to... to learning dressage, or wielding his lance like a barbarian trussed up in noble uselessness, or needling Edelgard. _Then,_ goddess yes, then Hubert will direct him to the horse trough.

Ferdinand tucks the cat under his sweater as the professor swans in, late as always, but Hubert catches him whispering to it now and then, pulling back his sweater to smile at the wild creature he’s stuffed down it. Ferdinand’s smile goes strange, then. Small, private, and when the cat paws at his cheek and Ferdinand beams like he’s stepping into the first shaft of sunlight after an eternity underground, Hubert snaps his fountain pen in his fingers.

The room goes quiet. Professor Byleth turns his sharp gaze towards Hubert, and Edelgard gives him a curious look as ink spills over Hubert’s hand.

“Oh,” he says. “I’m terribly sorry. I became. Inspired by the...” He looks at the board. “Spear trajectories.”

“Huh,” Byleth says. “Okay.”

Ferdinand kisses Harold the cat between its twitching ears, and ink drips from Hubert’s hand, running like blood over the desk.

—

That evening, Ferdinand arrives at the dining hall with the cat in a sling.

“I made it myself,” he tells Dorothea, in that painfully earnest voice he uses when he’s about to be brutally eviscerated in public. 

“Oh, so you wove the cloth?” Dorothea asks, half smiling.

“What, no, I. I tied it around my shoulder, you see, like this, and...”

For once, Ferdinand gets away with his dignity intact, because the cat chooses that moment to plop its paws over the sling and look up at him with its enormous, blinking yellow eyes. Dorothea actually leans forward to pet it, and Edelgard sighs and admits that yes, the cat _is_ kind of cute.

“More like incredibly,” Ferdinand says, eyes bright as he cuts a piece of fish off his plate. He hands it to the cat, which savages his fingers to get to it. “Ha! A fighter, too! Aren’t you a vicious little predator, yes you are.”

Hubert’s knife squeals along his plate.

“You’re bleeding, Ferdinand,” Linhardt drawls, without looking up from the book he’s shoved under the table. Ferdinand holds up his mauled hand.

“Look at that,” he says. He dabs off the cut and reaches for another piece of fish. “I suppose I’ll just have to trim _someone’s_ little claws, won’t I?”

Hubert lifts his glass to his lips and scowls as Ferdinand risks his skin yet again to satiate his yowling beast. The cup thumps against Hubert’s cheek, and water sloshes all over Hubert’s face and dribbles down his shirt, soaking the black cloth of his uniform jacket.

“Uh. Hubert?” Edelgard lays a gentle hand on his arm. “Are you... alright?”

The cat licks at Ferdinand’s fingers.

“Yes,” Hubert says. He pushes away from the table. “I must go, Lady Edelgard. I have. Business, to attend to.”

He doesn’t. He sorted out most of their monthly affairs in the first week, which means Hubert returns to his room to flip the pages in his magic tomes and try not to think about Ferdinand or that blasted _beast._ There are already hundreds of the things lounging around the monastery—Why didn’t Ferdinand just content himself with admiring them? Why does he have to take one for his own, name it Harold, kiss it and fawn over it like it’s something, something precious, something _sweet._ Hubert wants to drag Ferdinand into his room and trap him in a field of dark magic. He wants to, to rip off that ridiculous sweater, that sling, put the cat outdoors where it will surely be much happier and feel Ferdinand’s fingers through _his_ hair for once—

“What,” he says, into his empty room.

His rows of tidy, organized notes and textbooks stare back at him.

“No,” Hubert says. “No, I am simply. Overburdened.” He pushes away from his book and steps outside, only for a frantic, wild-eyed Ferdinand to go crashing into him. “Unhand me.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Ferdinand says. He pushes back his hair, which falls messy over his eyes. “We can sort out how much you despise having to look at me later. I’m currently. Well. That is.”

“Where is the thing you have,” Hubert says. “The creature.”

“Harold, yes.” Good goddess, he looks almost on the verge of tears. “He’s, he jumped out of the sling, you see, and he...”

“If you only just got him, surely he’ll survive a night on his own,” Hubert says.

Ferdinand looks like a kicked puppy, but Hubert can’t find it in himself to take any pleasure in it. Not when he’s still reeling from the thought of Ferdinand staring at him all soft and smiling, a hand in his hair. 

“Just. Let me know if you see him,” Ferdinand says, and goes racing off. Hubert watches him for a moment, then looks out into the dark, moonlit grounds of the monastery.

“Oh, to hell with all of it,” he says, and strides off towards the docks.

He finds the cat by the stables, in the end, a few hours before dawn. The cat is curled up in the box stall with Ferdinand’s destrier, nose pressed to its tail, and it beeps when Hubert picks it up in both hands. They stare at each other, man and cat, for a long, silent moment.

“I don’t like you,” Hubert says.

The cat purrs and twitches its whiskers at him. Hubert slowly draws the cat to his chest, and the cat rumbles loudly and drapes itself over his shoulder.

“It’s ridiculous,” Hubert says, sitting down in front of the stables with the cat slung over his neck like a shawl. “You’re a cat. There are millions of you. There’s nothing special about you.”

The cat swishes its tail at his neck and kneads his back. 

“He’s allowed to like you all he wants,” Hubert says. “It isn’t as though I’m. I’m certainly not. You’re a _cat._ _He_ is a nuisance. It’s no business of mine who he, who he kisses or touches or... makes faces at. He’s a thorn in Lady Edelgard’s side and this affection for a common feline is... that is.”

He strokes the cat gently, and its purrs die down as it starts to fall asleep on his shoulder.

“I do... wonder what it must be like,” Hubert says, alone in the dark with just a sleeping cat to witness him. “To be... held, or. To be...”

Footsteps scuffle behind the stables, and Hubert instinctively holds the cat closer as a figure rounds the corner. Then moonlight slides over a familiar, worried face, and Ferdinand crosses the distance between them and drops to a knee before Hubert.

“Oh, you found him,” Ferdinand says. He’s so close, like this, with his hair flopping over his eyes and his smile all watery and weak, but when he looks at Hubert, there’s that softness there, the one Ferdinand only reserves for cats, or horses, precious things. Hubert blinks at him, and the cat twists around to mew sadly.

“Yes,” Hubert says. “Well.”

Ferdinand reaches to take the cat, and his hand slides over Hubert’s. He holds it there, just for a moment, and Hubert’s breath comes short at the sudden heat of his touch, the scrape of calloused fingers over his. 

“Thank you,” Ferdinand says, and, before Hubert can react, leans down to press his lips to Hubert’s brow. 

Then he’s gone, just a shadow and his cat disappearing into the dark, leaving Hubert alone in the stables with his heart hammering and his face blazing with unexpected heat.


End file.
